


Le Bébé

by HgBird



Series: Le Bébé de Shuuneki [1]
Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Drabble, Implied Mpreg, M/M, Not Serious, On Hiatus, Still on Hiatus Even Though I Totally Just Posted Another Chapter
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-26
Updated: 2016-07-22
Packaged: 2018-02-18 22:13:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2363939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HgBird/pseuds/HgBird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of drabbles based on my original drabble, Minutes in a Ball Pit (in which Tsukiyama and Kaneki are proud parents of a precious ghoul child named Laramie). Featuring hits such as Tsukiyama making PLAYFUL DAD NOISES while others rightfully look on in disgust and concern for a child's safety.</p><p>shuu: i'm gonna eat the baby<br/>kaneki: don't eat the baby<br/>shuu: i'm eating the baby</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Metaphorically Delicious

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "The impulse that I described in this [drabble] does not take the form of an urge to literally bite, chew, and digest a small infant.
> 
> Rather, in my experience at least, it arises in utterances such as, 'Your baby is so cute I could just eat him all up!' and in behaviors such as placing the baby's toes against the lips and repeatedly uttering the syllable 'nom,' in an attempt to elicit a giggle from the baby.
> 
> I hope that you will not only stand firm with me in refraining from infant cannibalism, but that you will also urge your friends, family members, and neighbors to do the same."

“I’m going to eat the baby.” Tsukiyama held the infant up by the crook of his arms. The baby stared back in bewilderment. Wide eyed, mouth partially open. Not a single sound escaped the small vessel. Laramie Tsukiyama was like this with the Gourmet, silent and curious. If he was afraid, he never showed it.

“Don’t eat the baby.” Kaneki looked up from the novel he was, in this case, rereading. It didn’t bring him the same excitement it once did, but it remained one of his favorites. A boy becomes an insect. Kaneki spared a smirk at the irony.

“Too late, mon amour. Le bébé est mine.” Tsukiyama slid to his knees, dropping Laramie onto the light green sofa.

Kaneki glanced up, watching from behind white bangs. His silence was alarming, but his careful eye spoke otherwise.

Shuu slid a hand up Laramie’s stomach, bunching the red and blue striped shirt up and exposing pearly white skin. “Exquisite,” he murmured under his breath before looking over to Kaneki a pride threatening to show at the edges of his smile. “Is it not?”

Briefly catching Touka’s eye from where she stood, disinterested, behind the couch where Kaneki rest, Shuu smirked. Laramie meanwhile remained silent, almost eerily so. Noise from Laramie was rare unless he was overstimulated or hungry, and his parents made sure he was never starving.

Tsukiyama pressed his mouth to the skin above Laramie’s navel and proceeded to make the most awkward noises that were supposed to resemble the noises parents make when they’re pretending to each their child to elicit giggles from the infant. From Shuu, they sounded normal if not a bit concerning. And everyone was clearly unsettled.

“Can you please, you know, _not_?” Nishiki snapped, fingers tightening around the handle of his cup. “I am honestly not sure if I’m disgusted or concerned for the brat’s safety right now.”

Tsukiyama, lips not leaving Laramie’s belly, glanced up to lock eyes with the irritable ghoul. “Problema?” He muffled the question, blowing air out his mouth in a rather silly follow-up to the slightly challenging question. Laramie’s responding giggles resulted in a grin spreading across Shuu’s lips before he blew once more.

Shuu looked up at Kaneki, smiling with strands of purple falling over his face in a way uncharacteristic of his normally perfect hair.

“Did you hear that, Kaneki? He laughed.”

“He’s happy?” Kaneki raised an eyebrow. “Babies do that when they’re happy.”

Kaneki looked back down, burying his face in his reading to obscure the threatening smile.

But of course Tsukiyama noticed.

And then he smiled too.


	2. It's a Dangerous Kind of Love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a dumb idea that nearly spiraled its way into angst. I apologize. Also, warning in advance, I sort of diverged from the canon that ghouls can't really be hurt by normal means. Maybe I'm going with the idea that it's different for children (especially children who are only part ghoul). For the sake of this drabble, Laramie gets hurt sometimes, and it's not a fun event for anyone involved.

 “If you coddle him like this, he’s going to think he’s dying every time he gets a scraped knee.” Tsukiyama stated, voice slightly accusatory which Kaneki immediately picked up on.

“Coddle him? You think I _coddle_ him?”

“I do.” Tsukiyama said, not bothering to sugar coat it for Kaneki. “He looks to us every time he gets hurt. You overreact and that’s when he thinks, ‘oh, I must be dying.’”

“ _I_ overreact? You’ve got to be kidding me.” Out of the both of them, Kaneki was not the one know for overreactions and theatrics.

Tsukiyama put two fingers to his forehead in exasperation, as was customary of him when they fight. “I’m just saying that you’re going to raise him to be weak if he thinks he’s dying because of a paper cut.” Not that it was really possible for Laramie to get paper cuts, but the analogy came across loud and clear. They both knew that any injuries Laramie sustained healed well before Laramie would start crying over them.

“…well, around you he might just.”

“… _pardon_?”

Kaneki turned, moving an irritating strand of white from his vision. “You heard me the first time.” He picked up his book from the table, turning to leave the room. He was done with this conversation, and he had to go fetch Laramie from Touka anyway. She was never enthusiastic about having to watch him, and frankly, she wasn’t the best at it.

“…I don’t understand what you’re insinuating.” Kaneki couldn’t possibly be suggesting that he was going to eat their child, could he? Kaneki stepped towards the door, and Tsukiyama caught his arm. “Ken…”

Kaneki Ken shook the grip off easily, Tsukiyama’s hand falling to his side. “Don’t call me that.”

His vision of Tsukiyama obscured as he fully turned from him and walked from the room, nails sinking into the spine of his book before he had time to realize what he was doing.

“Kaneki,” Tsukiyama whispered as the door shut. It was hard to understand what he was thinking, which was something that always had attracted Tsukiyama to Shuu. But now, it was frustrating and…painful. “ _No kidding_.”

Sinking onto the couch dejectedly, he ran a hand through his bangs at the risk of messing up his perfectly combed over appearance. That was the least of his concern at the moment, and he barely even registered the fact--his nervous gestures taking priority in the situation.

“…Kaneki. What do you think of me?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If it wasn't obvious, their fight (if you can call it that) isn't really about Laramie. I'm rolling with the idea that Tsukiyama did something that ticked Kaneki off, and the boy's in a foul mood. Tsukiyama didn't read the warning signs and stepped on his feet about Laramie.


	3. Peculiare

“When is Kaneki-kun going to get back, _little one_?” Tsukiyama mused to the child. It wasn’t often Kaneki went out, leaving him alone with the baby. Looking down, he noticed Laramie looking up at him with wide eyes. They reminded him of Kaneki’s.

He hoisted the child up, Laramie struggling to get his feet firmly placed on his father’s legs. Once he got his footing, toes curling into the slippery fabric of Tsukiyama’s dress pants, he could teeter with Tsukiyama’s support. Approaching his first birthday, Laramie had long since been taking his first steps, even if his vocalization skills were seemingly nonexistent.

Laramie blinked and reached out towards his father’s face, his other hand clutching onto Tsukiyama’s suit. Tsukiyama raised an eyebrow in response, not used to such clingy behavior coming from the child. “What is it, mi amore?” Children were peculiar little creatures, but Tsukiyama liked this one. It never screamed and rarely cried, but it was the most curious thing to understand.

“I—“ Laramie interrupted whatever nonsense Tsukiyama was about to spew when he clumsily smacked a hand to his lips, fingers toying at the corner of his mouth. “Bébé, that’s not a place for your fing—“ Laramie stuck a curious digit into his father’s mouth. It must have been interesting to him. This was the place sounds came out. It was what he would press to Laramie’s belly when they were playing. It even made air.

Tsukiyama, however, was not used to such curiosity. It wasn’t typical for someone to casually offer their appendages to him.

Gauging the boy’s reaction, Tsukiyama nibbled on the tip of a finger. With no intent to harm, it was nothing more than how he might playfully blow on the child’s stomach. Laramie blinked, eyes widening before his mouth opened in a toothy grin.

The boy giggled, grabbing on to the arm of Tsukiyama's sweater.

Tsukiyama beamed down at the small child. He pulled the child away as he began to wobble from excitement and the apparent lack of concentration a child his age needed when standing on an unstable surface. 

The giggling, however, soon stopped after Tsukiyama held him up by his arms, and they met eyes.

Laramie blinked first as he reached out, noiselessly closing his fists in a grabbing gesture. A gesture Tsukiyama had only ever seen him make towards food.

Tsukiyama grinned.

“Peculiare!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which Tsukiyama is a dweeb who doesn't realize Laramie makes grabby hands at things he wants, not solely things he eats.


	4. No One Wants to Admit Their Child is the Anti-Christ

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whoa, i wrote something?? thanks for all the nice comments; im glad you like laramie. hope this chapter doesn't ruin how cute you find this series. (also please pardon all the mistakes)

Laramie was a boisterous child, a handful for the preschool teachers to be sure. An oddity at best, a disaster at worst, the ghoul of a child was a nightmare during the school day. At first, the supervisors had chalked it up as being an extremely bad case of separation anxiety: Laramie would scream nonstop for at least thirty-eight minutes after his father dropped him off, for forty-seven if it was the other father, the one with indigo-colored hair that the staff could never muster up the ability to like.

Separation anxiety, they called it when Laramie’s teeth sunk into the arm of the poor daycare lady who tried to pick the sobbing child up.

He would always be calm by lunch time, when he would eat whatever it was his parents had prepared for him. It was the same thing every day, some sort of thinly sliced meat and a canteen of something that Karin claimed left him smelling like freshly ground coffee beans. They thought to take his canteen, to check to see if the child was drinking pure coffee, until they realized his father had the same scent.

(The man laughed, fingers scratching at his chin. “I work at a nearby coffee house. Somehow the smell of coffee beans just never seems to wash out.”)

He doesn't eat like the other kids, they remarked. No juice boxes, pudding cups, or sandwiches cut like cat faces.

(Laramie was clinging to his father’s side. Hand left chin to casually ruffle the boy’s hair, before resting on his head. “He’s the pickiest eater in the family. When I was his age, I would eat anything. But not him. Trust me, we’re saving you the hassle of fighting with him. Let us handle his nutrition at home.”)

After the one-time they coerced the boy into trying something new, they decided to listen to Kaneki’s suggestion. No one likes listening to three-year-olds puke in the bathroom.

He was a sheltered child with strict needs. The separation anxiety was normal, they reasoned. 

But separation anxiety, they didn't call it when Laramie buried teeth into the soft flesh below the belly button of another child. No, they remarked after they had asked the boy why he bit his little playmate, this isn’t separation anxiety.

Laramie tilted his head, as if utterly confused by their question. “Because I wanted to.” 

Nobody believed Karin when she said she swore his eyes turned black.

But what they did believe, what everyone had known, was that Laramie Tsukiyama was an absolutely, utterly fucked up child. It wasn't always obvious how strange the boy was. In fact, he was surprisingly normal at times. He loved toy trucks and wrestling with the other boys. He smiled and laughed just like every other child, and it was unfair, they thought, that such a monster of a child could have a smile so bright, so bright it leaves you yearning a future you didn't even know you were missing. But just like that, it would be gone, and all that remains is the child who would burst out in shrieks, only calm once wrangled into a corner where he would chew his fingers until the teachers were sure they would bleed. Pulling his hands from his mouth would only make him cry more and his fingers were never bloody stumps, so it was a habit they never tried to break.

There’s no easy way to tell a child’s parents that they’re raising the anti-Christ; but as a daycare worker, it was all part of the job.

“I, um, have concerns about Laramie.”

“Concerns?” Kaneki asked, looking over his shoulder to check on Laramie, as if he were to suddenly disappear. But the boy with messy violet hair was still where he lay, kicking his legs in the air as he drew a picture with carefree abandon that Kaneki envied.

“...among other things, yes. He drew a certain...picture the other day that we thought to bring to your attention.” She slid a thick piece of drawing paper across the table. “As you can see, it appears to be...uh...particularly violent.”

The picture was rendered as artistically as any three-year-old could manage, but it was undoubtedly recognizable as Laramie standing beside his two parents, as harmless and cliche as any child’s drawing. Except for the corpse of a disemboweled woman beside them. But they were all still smiling, so it's not like it was an unhappy drawing.

“ _Peculiare._ ” Tsukiyama’s hand covered his mouth, hiding a widening grin. If the silly woman took it as horrified shock, than that was her own prerogative.

“What were we thinking?” Kaneki asked once they were clear of the building, not sounding as if he actually wanted an answer. A hypothetical, if you please.

“You were just adamant for some semblance of what you call ‘normalcy,’ I couldn't have possibly refused you, mi amore.” Tsukiyama said. He tightly held on to his son’s hand. It was too adorable, so he gave it a squeeze. “I never wanted this for him. It’s so...trite. We can give him so much better.”

He scooped the toddler up into his arms, prompting a shriek and then an eruption of giggles as he kissed the boy’s cheek.

Kaneki stopped and turned to look at Tsukiyama and Laramie. After a moment, he motioned for Tsukiyama to hand him over. Which he did without question.

“Why did you draw that?” The--you know you're not supposed to do things like that--was left unspoken. 

“Because,” Laramie’s words were unpronounced and slurred in a childish manner, “I don't like Miss Karin. I’d rather eat her.”

Kaneki never once thought to send him to daycare after that.


End file.
